Most British pig farms buy their feed in. That is not a criticism, it is the way the industry has set itself up over the last few decades. Specialist feed compounders source ingredients globally, blend them to a tight specification, and deliver them by lorry to farms across the country. It is efficient, it works, and it lets the pig farmer focus on the pigs.
We do not do it that way. The grain that becomes the feed that becomes our pork is grown, milled and fed on a single farm in Essex. This article is about why, and what it means.
The basic shape of the operation
We farm 330 hectares of arable land at Spains Hall in Willingale. The crops are conventional in mix: cereals primarily, with the usual rotations and break crops to keep the land in good condition. What is less conventional is what happens to the grain after harvest.
Rather than selling it on the open market, the bulk of the cereal crop is stored on the farm and milled on-site in the mill we built and run ourselves. The milling operation is powered by solar electricity generated on the farm. The milled feed goes directly to our pigs, which are housed on the same site.
The manure from the pigs is collected, stored, and applied back to the arable land using our contracting team’s slurry equipment. Which means the next year’s crop is partly fed by the previous year’s pigs. Which means the next year’s pigs are partly fed by that crop. And so on.
Why do it this way?
Three reasons, in order of importance.
The first is provenance. When we sell pork into Procter's Sausages or to trade customers, we can say with confidence what the pigs ate, where it came from, and how it got there. That is a level of traceability that an “outsourced feed” operation simply cannot offer at the same level. For trade customers who care about provenance, and for the consumers who eventually eat the product, that matters.
The second is resilience. Global feed prices move. The 2022 and 2023 markets in particular taught a lot of pig farmers some hard lessons about what happens when feed costs go up and pig prices do not. We are not immune to those shifts, but we are insulated. The cost of producing a kilo of feed on our own farm is more stable than the cost of buying one in.
The third is the land. Slurry and manure are nutrients. Applied to the same land that produces the feed, they close a loop that would otherwise have to be filled with bought-in fertiliser. We still apply bagged fertiliser where the crop needs it (our contracting team applies it for other farmers across Essex as well), but the contribution from the pigs reduces the gap. The soil is better for it; the input bill is lower; the cycle works.
What it does not solve
It would be dishonest to pretend the system is perfect. Growing your own feed on a single farm means you are exposed to a bad year on that farm. A poor harvest, a difficult spring, a flood: any of those things matter more to us than to a farm that buys feed in from a diversified pool. We carry that risk deliberately because we think the upsides are worth it.
We also still buy in things we cannot produce ourselves: minerals, supplements, and some specialist additives that the pigs need at particular life stages. The “home-grown” label is honest but not absolute.
Where it goes
The pork we produce goes to nearby abattoirs, which keeps the food miles low (an underappreciated part of the sustainability story), and then onwards: most of it to Procter's Sausages in Ipswich, the consumer brand we acquired in 2024, and some to trade and hospitality buyers directly through the Procter's team.
If you are a buyer interested in pork that has a real, documented story behind it, the route is through Procter's. If you are a farmer who wants to talk about how we set up the milling and the slurry system, we are happy to chat about that too.
Fourth-generation farmer at Spains Hall, Willingale. Runs the contracting team and writes most of what appears here.